"...ncess... Princess... It's time to wake up..." my eyes flutter open this morning to the gentle croons of Daddy as he lays next to me, his palm cupping my cheek so his thumb can stroke away at the tender flesh under my eye... This is not how I'm used to being woken up and in my sleep fogged mind I can't help but feel just a tiny bit grumpy over the fact that Daddy's lips are pressing themselves to my forehead instead of my hip in order to urge me to wake all the way up instead of just continuing to blink at him in my confusion.
"Good morning, Princess...Hi there..." When I'm finally able to understand that Silas is actually waking me up for the morning and not just letting me know he's getting up to go pee so I don't panic if I wake up while he's doing so or to put more cream on my sore bottom I get a smile that is so gentle it almost makes me feel shy, a single chaste kiss being pressed to my lips before Silas releases my cheek and sits up, his hand being offered to help me follow suit, my still bleary eyes getting rubbed to make sure that what I'm seeing all around the room is actually there...
...
Silas
....
"Am...Am I still dreaming?" It had been precious getting to watch Adrian's facial expressions this morning, his grumpy expression unexpected but adorable before it had shifted back to sleepy and then confused but happy... As much as he normally reads like an open book his sleepiness increases the honestly of the trait tenfold, the disbelief in his voice when he looks at me and then does a double-take back to the storybook scene unfolded before him.
I hadn't gone back to sleep after the last alarm for us to reapply the medicated cream had gone off, the quick application of it not enough to fully pull my Bean from his peaceful sleep, something he had promptly returned to the moment he was tucked back under the blanket.
I had used the time between then and now to get to work on something that I had been planning on saving for his birthday and special occasions, a grand gesture to once again express to my nugget how sorry I am to have accidentally hurt him yesterday.
I had had to swallow my pride and ask for a favor from a certain warlock in order to make everything as magical as it needs to be, and Casper and Kore had only just left, the two of them having brought in enough flowers from the flower shop they run together to make that ridiculous flower parade they show on television every year look like a cheap bouquet.
They had both also kindly exhausted themselves transforming our home with charms to change the texture of the walls, the fireplace morphing into one that looks older, whisps of real straw strewn about the floors that had been charmed to look as though they're stone instead of carpet and tile.
The friends that I still am not entirely comfortable having had succeeded in aiding me in turning the house into a recreation of the one in one of my Princess's most cherished books, the first romance novel he had ever bought for himself The Highlander's Charm.
We had taken the time to read it together after we had found his copy of it unpacking his books, and to my surprise, it had been well written and balanced, the story about a vampire who had lost himself in the war only to be found by his mate, an omega from one of the many Scottish packs of wolves, the tiny shifter having alerted his clan so that they might take him in and save his life.
It was everything you would expect a mushy period drama to be, but in the best way possible and it was more than obvious how much my Baby loves every single word of it with how well-worn the cover is and how when reading aloud he barely had to glance at the words on the page, having read it so many times he's committed most of it to memory... And today, even though there will be no way in hell I will ever try and impersonate a vampire simply because there is no situation in which it is appropriate to imitate other races... Today my Sweet Baby deserves to live in his favorite fairy tale so he can be distracted by how much his ass still hurts.
...
Adrian
...
"You aren't dreaming, Pup... I need you to be with me, it's the only way I feel at home." The words that drip themselves out of Daddy's lips thicker and sweeter than honey make me squeal and launch myself into his arms, the line itself taken from the best chapter in my favorite book, the scene where Emory the vampire finally askes Flinn to marry him and make their mating official in the eyes of the vampiric community after Flinn finally accepts and marks him.
It always makes me cry because it's such a sweet and tender moment, and hearing it quoted from my favorite person in the whole wide world after seeing that he's clearly gone through a lot of effort while I was sleeping, the room I had woken up in not the one I'm familiar with even though it still smells like home.
The fireplace is larger than it was before, Daddy's recliner replaced with a highbacked rocking chair with the side table morphed into more more simplistic, what looks to be my copy of The Highlander's Charm resting on it next to a pair of wire-framed reading glasses that look suspiciously like the frames Emory wears in the novel, a sea of rose petals strewn about the floor, pieces of straw poking up through them stretching from one ancient-looking heavy brickwork wall to the other, matching elaborate bouquets set in clay vases in each corner, not even our bed and bedding left unchanged, our dark sheets transformed into soft white cotton and what I think may be a down mattress, our pillows the only thing in the entire room that looks familiar other than Daddy himself.
"I thought maybe today we could have an easy day... A day about you. Is that okay?"